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Saturday, November 4, 1972
RESULTS OF CAMPAIGNS AGAINST CHILD EMPLOYMENT
The Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Mr. David Lin, said today
improved methods to check the age of workers have met with some success.
He was disclosing findings of the 8th and 9th campaigns against
child employment in industry launched by the department during the summer
holidays.
He said: "The department has been able to verify the age of over
90% of the suspected children found in these two campaigns. The age veri-
fication rate in the 6th and 7th campaigns mounted in 1971 was only 70%."
In July, labour inspectors visited 920 industrial undertakings
and found 89 children being employed in 65 of them.
In the August exercise, 63 of the 861 industrial concerns visited
were found employing a total of 84 children.
Explaining the improved methods, Mr. Lin said the main difficulty
in establishing the age of the young workers was due to the children's
identity card which did not bear any photograph or show the full name of its
holder.
Under the new methods, he said, home visits to verify the age of
suspected children were made on the same day when the industrial undertakings
were inspected.
This enabled inspectors, if necessary, to get hold of suspected
children who were found to have given false or incomplete addresses for
further classification, he said.
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